Cyber liability insurance isn’t worth the cost

Cyber liability insurance isn’t worth the paper it’s written on according to the majority of
security professionals canvassed at this year’s Infosecurity
Europe exhibition.

There were serious doubts among 63% of the security professionals quizzed
who revealed they believed that insurers wouldn’t honour claims if their systems were breached.

Trust is so low in the insurance industry that 32% of survey respondents said they don’t even
bother to seek cyber liability insurance.

These findings follow a recent declaration by security vendor Comodo that said it would honour a
warranty and pay up if its customers systems became infected while using its anti virus
protection.

The Infosecurity survey was carried out by AppRiver, a
SaaS security provider, and Jim Tyer, EMEA channel director at the vendor, waspishly said: “It’s
alarming the high percentage of people who have little to no faith in the insurance industry...
with as many as 91% of organisations claiming to have suffered a cyber attack perhaps the insurance
sector should issue a collective sigh of relief that nearly a third of organisations aren’t seeking
cover.”

Interestingly, none of the survey respondents who had cyber liability insurance had made a claim
on their policy. Tyer added: “... the likelihood that no-one has suffered a breach is unlikely
meaning either a percentage of people lied, hadn’t made a claim even though they’d suffered a
breach or, in my opinion the most probable, are blissfully unaware of their current security
posture. Not a particularly comforting thought.”

Comodo’s warranty offer ruffled feathers among the anti virus community when it was recently
introduced into the UK. Its CEO, Melih Abdulhayoglu, said that in almost three years of
offering users a warranty, backed by insurance specialist Chubb, there had not been a single claim
and although one might emerge it remained confident that its software would continue to protect
users.

However, if Tyer’s claims are true, and given the high rate of virus infection generally, this
would suggest that user’s aren’t bothering to chase warranty deals or they’re not aware that their
system has been infected.

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